Adaptable Software Retrieval Service for Wireless Environments Based on Mobile Agents
Eduardo Mena, Alfredo Goñi, Arantza Illarramendi, José Alberto Royo · 2002
One of the most frequent tasks using any kind of com-puter is the retrieval of new software, that is commonly downloaded from websites that offer freeware, shareware and demos, such as Tucows. However, naive users must deal with too many technical details in order to take advan-tage of these facilities. Moreover, navigating those websites without exactly knowing what we look for results in high communication costs, specially for wireless device users. In this paper we present a Software Retrieval Service that, first, allows users to obtain software by browsing a catalog (that contains a semantic description of software available at different repositories), and second, it minimizes the use of the network by adapting its behavior to the cur-rent network status. The service has been developed using mobile agent technology. In the paper we describe the main elements that take part of the service and stress how the system adapts its behavior to the current network status.